Richard C. Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change and Biology as Ideology, and the co-author of The Dialectical Biologist (with Richard Levins) and Not in Our Genes (with Steven Rose and Leon Kamin).

IN THE REVIEW

Biology’s Brave New World: The Promise and Perils of the Synbio Revolution

by Laurie Garrett

The Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology

by the Friends of the Earth US, the International Center for Technology Assessment, and the ETC Group

Nothing in history suggests that those who control and profit from material production can really be depended upon to devote the needed foresight, creativity, and energy to protect us from the possible negative effects of synthetic biology. In cases where there is a conflict between the immediate and the long-range consequences or between public and private good, how can that conflict be resolved?

Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People

by Harry Ostrer

The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology

by Nadia Abu El-Haj

The question of ancestry has been of human concern in virtually all cultures and over all times of which we have any knowledge. Whether it be a story about the origin of a particular tribe or nation and its subsequent mixture with other groups, or curiosity about a family history, there is always the implication that we understand ourselves better if we know our ancestors and that we, within ourselves, reflect properties that have come to us by an unbroken line from past generations.

The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding

Hercule Poirot has an easy time of it. He needs only the logic provided by his “little gray cells” to discern, unerringly, which of the dozen or so guests at the country house or passengers in the sleeping coach have committed the crime, nor is there any doubt that those …

The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture

by Evelyn Fox Keller

In trying to analyze the natural world, scientists are seldom aware of the degree to which their ideas are influenced both by their way of perceiving the everyday world and by the constraints that our cognitive development puts on our formulations. At every moment of perception of the world around us, we isolate objects as discrete entities with clear boundaries while we relegate the rest to a background in which the objects exist. That tendency, as Evelyn Fox Keller’s new book suggests, is one of the most powerful influences on our scientific understanding.

What Darwin Got Wrong

by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini

There is an immense amount of biology missing from our modern formulation of evolution by natural selection. Why, when vertebrates evolved wings, did they have to give up their front legs to do it? Why don’t birds that live in trees make a living by eating the leaves instead of spending so much of their energy looking for seeds or worms? It is these considerations that lie at the heart of Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s discussion of What Darwin Got Wrong.